Central Station’s own Project Coordinator, Kim highlights a selection of works on display:

Wandering through the Glue Factory, I can’t help but notice how great a venue it is for a huge group exhibition such as this. Having been here several times before, I soon realise the material of the building stood out more than previously because so many artists have successfully created site-specific works, respecting and (in some cases) enhancing the fabric of the building.

‘Thigh Rack’ by Vigdis Storsveen

John Calcutt (MFA Programme leader) kindly gives me a brief intro to the show, showing me all the nooks and crannies the students have used to display their works. I immediately encounter Norwegian multi-disciplinary artist, Vigdis Storsveen’s large wax sculpture which hangs from the ceiling as you enter the building. Vigdis also has a ‘metal forest’ on display upstairs, resembling fragments from trestle tables.

‘Mercedes (café)’ by Maria Toumazou

Maria Toumazou’s work literally stands out with maze-like structures emerging from the walls. I am particularly drawn to the one pictured above as it holds an especially eerie quality in the darkness with beautiful contrasting textures – lambswool, wood and ceramic.

The unmistakable sounds of strong Québécois voices come from Sarah F. Maloney’s video piece – Gagnon-Ville you’re my Dearest. Maloney’s video explains the closure of Gagnon-Ville, a mining city in Québec which was completely torn down when the mines closed. This short piece becomes a melancholic ode to a city most have never heard of.

Jack Cheetham explores people as commodities using 3D printed ceramic models. An iPad sits on an unusual shelving unit and plays ‘fake’ CCTV footage of the models in a shopping mall along with the occasional tannoy announcement.

‘Asda made us great’ by Jack Cheetham

Installation by Fanny Wickström

Mangled and contorted forms in Fanny Wickström’s sculptures with enlarged genitalia and extra limbs is reminiscent of the Chapman Brothers‘ works. Mixing humour and the grotesque, green painted fingers grow from the ‘garden’ and a scrotum earring hangs from an oversized human ear.

Aniara Omann’s altered replica of an Easter Island Moai figure is slightly hidden upstairs. The imposing structure becomes somewhat less intimidating as a playfully raised eyebrow shifts the viewer’s first impression. Complimenting the figure in a bizarrely appropriate way are two videos which include Arnold Schwarzenegger discussing his life and body.

‘Real Bodies #2: Moai, raised eyebrow’ by Aniara Omann

‘Zabriskie’s Point Reversed.MOV’ by Emily McFarland

Emily McFarland’s reversal of cult film, Zabriskie’s Point approaches film as a ready-made, in a similar manner to GSA alumnus Douglas Gordon. McFarland reappropriates found footage by reversing the main explosions, crashes and fire elements in the film; creating a poetic composition.

Stephanie Burt’s mixed media installation is aesthetically titillating from every angle. Amazingly, Burt also succeeds in portraying the installation as an accident, with shards of glass on the floor and torn chicken wire across its frame.

‘Celine and Julie Go Boating’ by Stephanie Burt

‘for a bucket: your hand or mine’ by Kirsty Palmer

The building serves Kirsty Palmer’s work particularly well with her flaky, fragile sculptures mirroring the edifice’s degenerative qualities. Icelandic artist, Selma Hreggvidsdottir creates a “Shrine” inside the building, revealing and celebrating a neglected space with exposed brickwork and cobwebs aplenty. Selma highlights this again in the adjoining space where a video ‘through a keyhole’ plays in a room where a divider wall is papered with a white brickwork pattern.

On its surface, the Glue Factory still appears a bit battered and bruised from years of neglect. However, it’s precisely this history which makes it the perfect venue for this year’s MFA graduates who have the energy and diversity to bring this building back to life.

‘Shrine’ by Selma Hreggvidsdottir

The exhibition continues at The Glue Factory, 15 Burns Street, Speirs Locks, Glasgow G4 9SA until 22 June. A selection of works from MFA 2011-2014 is also on display at citizenM Glasgow until 28 June.

Words and photos by Kim Stewart

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Midnight Sun Drinking Buddy by Scott Rogers (whittled wooden objects, twine, antique beer bottles, beer labels, beer, various other objects)

The Glasgow School of Art’s MFA 2012 Degree Show at the Glue Factory is well worth a visit. Be sure not to miss Scott Rogers’s sculpture Midnight Sun Drinking Buddy (image above) – it’s located upstairs on the balcony. At first glance, this sculpture seems full of potential energy. Tentatively approached, awaiting to see it spur into life, it soon becomes apparent that it is not a replica Fischli & Weiss work, rather an homage or slight reference to The Way Things Go. Huge congratulations to Rogers who won this year’s Glasgow Sculpture Studios Award.

Alexi Romanov by Claire Moore (Oil and Wax on Board)

As one of the only painters in this year’s MFA show, Moore’s work certainly stood out. Her use of nostalgia and how the portrayal of the past can be altered are beautifully portrayed in pieces which demand your long attention. References to World War II, the Polish Cavalry Charge of 1939 and Eastern European nostalgia are all explored.

Venus Flytrap by Urara Tsuchiya (performance)

Urara Tsuchiya’s Venus Flytrap performance is (in her words) “an anti-climax, boring performance”. However, the phallic-like costumes are hardly boring. Tsuchiya works with and takes inspiration from the Turner Prize 2012 nominee Spartacus Chetwynd, assisting with costumes. Creator of the Adult Baby Beauty Pageant Toddler’s and Tiaras for Glasgow International 2012, Tsuchiya wants to do more of these pageants so look out and get involved.

Other notable works at this year’s show include:

Studio Works 2011-2012 by Josée Aubin Ouelllette (mixed media)

Chase by Erik Osberg (HD video)

Augmented Reality Experience by Minka Stoyanova
“Designed specifically for the Glasgow School of Art, MFA Degree Show Preview, And Another Thing adds a virtual, gamic layer to the site of the exhibition.”

The MFA Degree Show runs from the 7 – 16 June 2012 at The Glue Factory.
You can find out more about the GSA MFA Degree show here.

Preview:
Glue Factory, Friday 11 June, 5–7pm
CCA, 7–10pm

Exhibition Runs from Saturday 12 – Saturday 26 June
This year’s MFA is sited in The Glue Factory*. Used earlier this year for Glasgow International, the space provides a much less uniform space than the awesome, hangar like Tramway, with odd quirky rooms and warren-like staircases. Today, after weeks of sunshine, Glasgow is buckling under an intense rainstorm, and The Glue Factory resembles a bit of a leaky ship. This is a familiar Weegie set-up then - unsuspecting, post-industrial, grimecore warehouse plays shelter to conceptual work, which in turn pays site-specific homage.

It’s possible to identify two broad (and very generalised) strands present at the show. One is the site specific, post-industrial kind mentioned above, the other a more detached practice which relates to contemporary phenomena – chiefly data and the internet.

In the post-industrial, site-specific camp are artists like Sarah Forest, and Olga Schulz, who has installed an interestingly minimal sculptural shelter based on a peeling poster.

Tom Harrup has taken all the heavy-duty rawness almost full circle. His light installations take apart and celebrate machinery – everything is recycled, junk-yard-sourced and unfinished – yet in the darkened space these are two of the most hypnotic and graceful interventions you’ll encounter. Rings of light ebb and float mid-air, a theatre iris breathes a pattern against a dull brick wall.

Perhaps Tom is the conceptual bridge to the other camp of artists who deconstruct the technical and the digital. Ellie Harrison needs no prior introduction to Central Station members, and her works often have an online presence. She shows her witty General Election Drinking Game in it’s entirity here. Emily Donnini has made a slick piece which re-presents top google-searches of various countries as stop-frame animations back-projected onto floated glossy perspex screens.

Maybe the most intriguing graduate is Oliver Braid. Braid has presented a framed drawing – six pencil portraits in a detailed but slightly schoolboy style. Five of the portraits are of male graduating BA artists whom Braid considers to be the ‘hottest’ in the year. The images are culled from their Facebook profiles. The 6th image is a distorted reimagining of the artist as a sort of Facebook Zombie. A tangled off-white sculpture made from glue sits atop the frame – “the content of his gluepot”, Graham Ramsay, one of the MFA tutors explains.

How do I begin to unravel Post-Relational Aesthetic Onanism via Social Networking? Do I even want to? Seeing as we’re exploring the medium here, I have, in the interests of thorough research, befriended Oliver Braid on Facebook*, and will attempt to get him onto this very platform, and perhaps he can have the last word. Who knows, he may already be lurking as I write. In the meantime, here’s a Quentin Crisp quote from his artist’s statement:

“People who have learned to sing will always have richer, rounder voices. People who’ve learned to dance will always have bigger, bolder movements, but as for pottery and basket-weaving, what good are they? The moment the doors of the evening institute clang shut behind you you are back where you started. On the way home you might get into an argument with a stranger at a bus stop. It’s no good saying I can’t express myself you’ll have to come and see my baskets.” Quentin Crisp, 1980

*UPDATE. Friend request accepted.

Thanks to Graham Ramsay, MFA Tutor, for the tour, and to Kirsty Barr for organising.